Unemployment data – first signs of recovery?

Warwick Business School's Industrial Relations Research Unit (IRRU) is the provider of UK data to the European Restructuring Monitor (ERM), a European Union funded information resource run by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound).

Monitoring all UK job loss announcements on a 4-weekly basis is just one of the sources of information that IRRU undertakes. Its most recent monitoring reveals that job loss announcements have fallen steeply in the UK in recent months. In the four weeks from 22 December 2008 to 18 January 2009 46,980 job loss announcements were made in the UK, but this had fallen to only 6,962 in the four weeks from 16 March to 12 April 2009. The totals of recorded job loss announcements, starting with the most recent, are:

16 March - 12 April: 6962
16 February - 15 March: 19679
19 January - 15 February: 24174
22 December - 18 January: 46980
24 November - 21 December: 23723
Source: ERM

Thomas Prosser, Research Associate of IRRU, commented, "The most recent data show a steep and sudden decrease in job loss announcements. Although the ERM does not gauge job losses exactly, (it only measures large scale job loss announcements rather than implemented redundancies), these figures are very interesting because they demonstrate future labour market trends in a way that conventional unemployment data do not."